The Greatest Shipbuilding Port in the World


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Over the last six centuries there were over 400 Registered shipyards on the Wear from the harbour mouth up to just past the Golden Lion at South Hylton, its pretty much recorded in the history of the country so that would to me suggest Sunderland is the home of shipbuilding
Yes but my point is the profile the Tyne has I popular culture. There are more songs, tv programs, poems and folklore about the Tyne. I’m not talking historical fact I’m talking about popular culture.
 
I’d be delighted to be convinced otherwise but television, music, the arts would appear to support my theory.
Tonnage is the answer. Sunderland were the most prolific shipbuilders in the U.K. in the 18th century, 19th century and arguably the first half of the 20th century (the Clyde sometimes produced slightly more but that was spread over numerous towns along the Clyde). We produced 28% of the UK’s output during the Second World War and significantly more than the whole of Japan, who later went on to dominate shipbuilding until Korea and China got into the market.

We were the biggest shipbuilding town (or city) in the world.

The tyne was famous for warships and the Mauritania…even then their biggest shipyard was run/owned by a Mackem as were a lot of the shipyards on the tees.
 
Yes but my point is the profile the Tyne has I popular culture. There are more songs, tv programs, poems and folklore about the Tyne. I’m not talking historical fact I’m talking about popular culture.
Have you had your Sunday for Sammy dvds on?

I just googled ‘biggest shipbuilding towns’ and Sunderland were half the first page.

I liked this result:

The 19th century
Shipbuilding in Sunderland continued to grow during the 19th century, with the number of shipyards along the Wear growing from nine in 1801 to 76 in 1840.

By this time Sunderland was Britain’s most prolific shipbuilding town, with the 1835 Lloyds Register of Shipping chronicling that it was “the most important shipbuilding centre in the country, nearly equalling as regards tonnage and ships built all the other ports put together”.

Between 1846 and 1854, a third of all ships built in the UK were from Wearside.

At this time, most ships were still made of wood, with Sunderland’s first iron ship built in 1852 and the production of steel ships beginning in the 1880s.



Our output equalled all the other ports put together. The tyne is more famous for coal.
 
The Wear was limited as to what size of ship could be built as it is quite small, however, there were some clever ideas to build as big as they could. The Tyne being a bigger river building bigger ships and more naval ships, so probably more famous.
 
We should have a Sunderland Emergency Vessel memorial like. We arguably won ww2 because of it. However there is reason for debate as to where this might be...
 
Davy lamp is for obvious reasons because the stadium is built on a pit. Also Bob Murray has a big affinity with the miners of County Durham, I think his dad might have been one, and for people growing up in the mining villages.
I had a long conversation with him about how he loved meeting people who had succeeded in life from that background.
He also loved having the miners banner half way up the stairs in the corporate bit of the west stand
 
Yes but my point is the profile the Tyne has I popular culture. There are more songs, tv programs, poems and folklore about the Tyne. I’m not talking historical fact I’m talking about popular culture.
Over the last six centuries there were over 400 Registered shipyards on the Wear from the harbour mouth up to just past the Golden Lion at South Hylton, its pretty much recorded in the history of the country so that would to me suggest Sunderland is the home of shipbuilding
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Yes but my point is the profile the Tyne has I popular culture. There are more songs, tv programs, poems and folklore about the Tyne. I’m not talking historical fact I’m talking about popular culture.
In recent years Robson Green displayed a massive bias towards Tyneside when talking about North East shipbuilding in his tv programme. Never once mentioning Sunderland or the Wear. He did briefly mention the Tees. This was sickeningly ignorant and a travesty and disgrace.
The Tyne had many shipbuilding towns along both banks but Sunderland was one town which incorporated both banks of the Wear.
In its heyday, in one year ,the Wear built more tonnage than the entire USA shipbuilders.
The biggest Shipbuilding town in the world.
Sunderland was booming, we had several countries embassies based in the town.
During WW2, the plans for ‘Liberty Ships’ were drawn on the Wear and sent to USA to build the ships .This massively boosted the North Atlantic supply convoys which had been dealt heavy losses due to Uboat attacks. This saved the UK which received essential food and raw materials which were desperately needed.
All these facts should be proudly celebrated by us all.
 
Not the original bow marra. That was done up on the Clyde by it's builders - John Brown's in 1967/68
But a replacement was indeed constructed in Sunderland for when the QE2 had a re-fit in Southampton in the late 70's.
that for me, as someone who worked on it, did indeed replace the inferior designed original bow.... I done my bit for the carbon footprint although i didn't know it at the time..3/4 extra knots I believe ;)
 
First time I heard about it was from an article many many years ago in the echo but I've never actually seen the original text which I presume was written in Latin anyway. I have seen the text where Bede says he was born in sundered land though so I'm guessing the bit where he describes the "coal miners of the Parishes of Monkwearmoth and Jarrow who name themselves Geordie" is also true.

Wherever this has come from, it doesn't appear to have come from Bede himself, who was humble enough not to produce anything autobiographical, as far as I can see. He describes the Wearmouth monastery in his Lives of the Holy Abbots of Weremouth and Jarrow (a translation can be found here Internet History Sourcebooks), but his main aim is to describe the lives of the first four abbots. With texts from this period, there is a big problem with apparent copies made in the Middle Ages; many of them are actually forgeries (particularly where land grants by kings are concerned) to provide false evidence in later disputes. The technology for deep mining of coal simply didn't exist in the 8th century when Bede was writing, so anything there was could only have been open cast or drift mining (tunnelling straight into the side of a hill).
 
Wherever this has come from, it doesn't appear to have come from Bede himself, who was humble enough not to produce anything autobiographical, as far as I can see. He describes the Wearmouth monastery in his Lives of the Holy Abbots of Weremouth and Jarrow (a translation can be found here Internet History Sourcebooks), but his main aim is to describe the lives of the first four abbots. With texts from this period, there is a big problem with apparent copies made in the Middle Ages; many of them are actually forgeries (particularly where land grants by kings are concerned) to provide false evidence in later disputes. The technology for deep mining of coal simply didn't exist in the 8th century when Bede was writing, so anything there was could only have been open cast or drift mining (tunnelling straight into the side of a hill).
I’m watching Vikings so I will be an expert on all this monastery stuff.

Athelstan etc - ask me anything?
 
I’m watching Vikings so I will be an expert on all this monastery stuff.

Athelstan etc - ask me anything?

Aethelstan: you need the biography by Sarah Foot in the Yale English Monarchs series. I've got a copy somewhere, but it's lost somewhere in the random piles which result when you have far more books than shelf space.
 
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